I’d endorse ways to help people incorporate tiny small changes into their lifestyles which don’t compromise performance.

So I was pleasantly surprised by Ecofont, a font developed to try and use up less ink – for companies with high print volumes it could end up being a significant cost saving.

It looks like this:

Though obviously it is meant to be used a lot smaller.

I don’t know if they thought about this though…

When people are using this font in their word processors their screens will need to show more white space.

Showing more white space takes up more energy (this is the logic behind Blackle, which is like Google but with a black background).

This leads to higher power usage – again a tiny difference, but significant over time.

Greenwashing always making it sound like it’s easy to be ‘environmentally friendly’. The truth – and it’s always like this with science – is a lot more complicated. It’s easy to do just as much damage as we save, or even more.

People really need to think for themselves more…

Advertisements

Like this:

LikeLoading...

Related

Actually, I think the white space concept was only relevant on old school monitor displays (you know, those big bulky ones). New monitors don’t differentiate between black and white, thus making Blackle mostly obsolete.

Cheers for the feedback, both of you. (You can tell who did science at school when cathode rays still mattered, right?)

Alex – not the best thought through post I’ve ever written, I’ll admit, but in my defence… As pointed out, power difference would be tiny. Very tiny. Would add up though, if it existed. (Okay, would probably be smarter to turn off monitors when not in use.)

Strictly speaking no product is being sold by distribution of the Ecofont. But it does get publicity for SPRANQ, the creative agency behind the font, which may lead to them profiting from an innovative, green image.